Jet spray off the whiteflies! That’s those little clouds of tiny white insects that fly away when you bump your plant. Some of them transmit diseases to some veggies. Spray off dust that interferes with natural predators. Whiteflies like the heads of your broccoli side shoots, so keep those picked pronto! Smudge off any eggs you see on the undersides of leaves. Use a finer spray for bean leaves and be gentle, beans stems can break easily. White flies like humidity, so plant less densely, and keep check on the inner and lower leaves. Add a 1″ layer of worm castings out to the dripline of your plant. Water it in well. Insecticidal soaps or Neem oil can reduce populations. You really don’t want those tiny white flies, cute and adorable as they look, because they encourage black sooty mold and aphids that inject toxins and also carry diseases. Not good.

Some aphids are still lollying from April and June. Some are pretty little green tykes, others are dull gray, or black, usually numerous where they have decided to camp. Same principles. Keep vigilant watch so things don’t get out of hand, keep your veggies picked, and jet spray. Look inside curled leaves, under the leaves, and in newly leafing tops. See more about Aphids at UC IPM!

Ants tend aphids. Some say sprinkle cinnamon around your plant to keep the ants off it. Otherwise, use safe ant bait stakes. Be sure the stakes are the right kind for the ants you have and the time of year. ARGENTINE ants prefer sweet baits year-round. Protein baits are attractive to Argentine ants primarily in the spring. Chemical baits are not ok in our organic veggie community gardens. Instead, a simple remedy can be putting a few drops of dish soap around and filling the nest entrance. Pull mulch back from the stem of your plant and let that immediate soil dry a bit. Ants nest near water. See more about Ants at UC IPM! See a lot more details about aphids and ants!

No mercy to those little green and black striped cucumber beetle cuties down in the cuke and squash flowers or simply strolling about! Squish. Or should we let a few pollinate our cucumbers and squashes even though they eat the flowers away? NO! Because they carry seriously nasty plant diseases.

Pick your outer lettuces leaves, cut & come again style. This guarantees you will find those morning slugs and snails. Poke around your beans gently and peek under squash and chard leaves for ambitious high altitude snail hikers. Scan your tomatoes for the varmints! Toss them someplace, the same place each time, so your local birds can gourmet on them. When the birds see you they will come for snacks! Use Sluggo, or the like, a few times to stop the generations, or hand pick if you can stand it.

Leafminers. Yuk. They chew on your chard and other veggies, get right between the layers of the leaf, making that section brown. External applications obviously can’t touch them. Pull away the infected sections of the leaf, remove badly infected leaves. There are several different kinds of leafminer insects that operate all at once. It’s their hatching season. Later summer there will be less. Keep harvesting to keep ahead of the miners.

Flea beetles in July? Yup. Those trillions of holes in the leaves? That’s who we’re talkin’ about. There are 3 to 4 generations per year, depending on weather, and the generation time is roughly 30 days. They look just like fleas, and are about impossible to catch. No mercy. Disturb their cycle by putting compost, manures, worm castings, under susceptible plants – eggplant, arugula, radish. They like radish the most, so plant it as a trap plant near other susceptible plants and let it grow out. Radish grows quickly, so plant it anytime! Turning the soil exposes the eggs and pupae to dry and die.

Keep the water coming so not only do cukes and lettuces stay sweet, the cukes and beans grow straight, but they grow fast and outgrow pests.

Unlike with insects, you don’t get a second chance with gophers.

Gophers are simply an ongoing pest for most gardeners. You mention them and gardeners groan. Now they are getting summer shiny and well fed on what you grow for them. It’s never too late to put in gopher barriers in any planting area. You can sink in an 18” to 2′ deep barrier, 6” above ground, perimeter, but better is to scoop out the area and lay the wire around and across the entire area, securing the wire edge to edge by weaving it with wire! Be sure neighboring edges are secure one way or another so there is no sneaking through. Hardware cloth will do the best job, lasts about 10 years, naturally is the most expensive. Chicken wire has too big an opening, and is easily gnawable. Aviary wire (1/2” opening), is the better choice, and disintegrates in about 3 years, but is tons better than nothing at all!

If installing a barrier isn’t an option, then trapping is the most effective. It’s not hard to do, but I admit, it’s not entirely pleasant or even safe. Please do be careful setting traps, especially if you are gardening alone. I push the dead creature down the tunnel and close up the tunnel. Hopefully any newcomers to that tunnel system will plug that section off. Wire traps, like Macabees, are cheap and effective, need only a small hole dug to install, less digging, saves nearby plants. Box traps are perhaps more humane, and probably catch the fast small babies better, but do install two, one each direction, that’s what’s effective, you need a hole at least a foot in diameter. That usually requires a plant or more loss. The easy way to find tunnels, if you can’t find it at the fresh mound, is to push a small diameter ¼” to ½” stick into the surrounding ground at intervals until it gives when you push it in. That’s your tunnel location. The bigger the tunnel, the better your chances, especially if it goes off in two directions. Install your traps, one each direction. More on gophers!UC Davis Integrated Pest Management Good hunting.

Last option, but overall expensive per cost per an area, time and repeated installations, is wire baskets. You can buy them or make them. First check out how deep your plant’s roots are likely to grow and shop or make accordingly. If the roots grow through the basket they are likely to be nibbled.

We have talked about small nuisances and gophers. We haven’t talked about bunnies, mice, deer, grasshoppers, skunks or others. But we can if you need to. Let me know.

Good gardening. Vigilance, giving immediate care, are two good traits to have. Keep it organic. Remove pest habitat, keep working your soil, keeping your plants healthy and resistant. Floating row covers can be a good early season choice. But they have to be opened daily when it gets too hot, and opened daily or removed to allow pollination when your plants start flowering. At that point, they become more work than they are worth for pest prevention. Avoid overplanting that leads to neglect by not harvesting. If you’ve done it, remove plants you don’t use, give away if possible. Replace with something new, vigorous and inspiring! Sometimes a plant you love will simply successfully grow through the season of the pest, outgrow the part of the pest’s cycle that would bother your plant. Plant year round habitat for natural predators, beneficial insects. They are hungry hard workers! Don’t kill the spiders, welcome the lizards, put a safe bowl of water for the birds – safe means away from kitties and with a little ramp so lizards and mice, the tinies can get out.

Basil is great with tomatoes, and a pack of culinary dandelions! It is thought to repel white flies, mosquitoes, tomato hornworms, aphids, houseflies, and asparagus beetles. Smells great and tastes great!

Beans, Cukes, Dill, Radish Combo! Cukes and Beans are great on the trellis, one high, one low. Dill goes with your pickling cukes. Radishes to deter Cucumber beetles.

The Green Bean Connection started as correspondence for the Santa Barbara CA USA Pilgrim Terrace Community Garden. All three of Santa Barbara’s community gardens are very coastal. During late spring/summer we are often in a fog belt/marine layer most years, locally referred to as the May grays, June glooms and August fogusts. Keep that in mind compared to the microclimate niche where your veggie garden is. Bless you for being such a wonderful Earth Steward!

Foliar plant care is so easy!
Use a Dramm Can, the Perfect Foliar Machine!

You can easily make this tea! A handful of castings, a handful to a cup of compost, handful of manure, stir and let them soak overnight in a bucket. In the morning, swoosh it around in the bucket one more time, let it settle, then pour the top liquid into your watering can, the one with the up turning rose. Add a Tablespoon Fish Emulsion/Kelp, mix, and drench your plants in the morning! Yum!

Magnesium is critical for seed germination and the production of chlorophyll, fruit, and nuts. Magnesium helps strengthen cell walls and improves plants’ uptake of nitrogen, phosphorus, and sulfur. Magnesium deficiency in the soil may be one reason your tomato leaves yellow between the leaf veins late in the season and fruit production slows down.

Sulfur, a key element in plant growth, is critical to production of vitamins, amino acids (therefore protein), and enzymes. Sulfur is probably the oldest known pesticide in current use. It can be used for disease control (e.g., powdery mildews, rusts, leaf blights, and fruit rots), and pests like mites, psyllids and thrips. Sulfur is nontoxic to mammals, but may irritate skin or especially eyes. Sulfur has the potential to damage plants in hot (90°F and above), dry weather. It is also incompatible with other pesticides. Do not use sulfur within 20 to 30 days on plants where spray oils have been applied; it reacts with the oils to make a more phytotoxic combination.

Epsom Salts are easy to do! Buy some Epsom Salts, what you soak your feet in, at the grocery store, mix a tablespoon per gallon, foliar feed! Foliar feeding is simply sprinkling leaves with your solutions, and works better than applying to the soil! Get a Dramm 5 liter long snouted watering can that has a turnable sprinkler head. That long spout comes in handy, reaching well into your plant! Turn the head so the water shoots up under the leaves then falls back on the tops! The long arc of the handle gives lots of maneuvering ability! Feed your plants once when they bloom, and again ten days later. The results, attributed to magnesium in the salts, are larger plants, more flowers, more fruit, thicker walled peppers! I use this mix on all my Solanaceaes: eggplant, pepper, tomato, tomatillo. Roses love it too!

Baking Soda & Nonfat Powdered Milk for PREVENTION!

The bicarbonate of soda makes the leaf surface alkaline and this inhibits the germination of fungal spores. Baking soda prevents and reduces Powdery Mildew, and many other diseases on veggies, roses, and other plants! It kills PM within minutes. It can be used on roses every 3 to 4 days, but do your veggie plants every 5 to 10 days, or after significant rains, as the plant grows, because these new plant tissues are not yet protected yet by your fungicide. Irrigate well 2 days before use; on a sunny day spray off as much of the PM as you can from plants in sunny locations. A heaping Tablespoon baking soda to a gallon of water, with a 1/2 Teaspoon of a surfactant – insecticidal or dish soap or salad oil, does the job. It is not effective without the surfactant to spread it and make it stick. You can add a liquid fertilizer with it if you want. Cautions: 1) I have had no trouble using it on my veggies, but it may burn the leaves of some other plants, so try it on a few leaves first. 2) Don’t apply during hot midday sun that can burn the leaves. 3) Avoid over use – it is a sodium, salt. For a definitive discussion of Baking Soda usage and research, see https://attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/bakingsoda.html. The article is an easy read, nicely summarized, has references, includes cautions and info on commercial preparations. Best of all is to plant powdery mildew resistant varieties:

Cucumber: Diva

Yellow Summer Squash: Success, Sunray, Sunglo

Zucchini: Ambassador, Wildcat

Pumpkin: 18 Karat Gold, Gladiator

Add nonfat powdered milk to your Baking Soda fungicide!Powdered milk is a natural germicide, boosts your plant’s immune system! Apply right away on young bean plants, all your cucurbits – cukes, zuchs, any mildew prone plant. A 1/4 c milk in your gallon of water. Get under those leaves, early morning so the leaves dry and the habitat is less humid.

Also add Salicylic acid, an aspirinto the mix! It triggers a defense response in tomatoes and other plants as well, and stimulates growth! One regular strength dissolved/gallon does the job.

Healthy plants and abundant production are so rewarding! Just take a few minutes to give your plants a boost with these simple treatments! Whether Dramm, or another can, get yourself a good one! Make it easy to get up under those leaves! Otherwise, you are treating only 1/2 your plant!

The average berry has 200 seeds, the only fruit whose seeds are on its exterior surface! The seeds are really the fruit!

Usually grown from runner daughters, they will grow from seed. Just throw down caps you bit the berry from. Sooner or later, you will have a plant you didn’t ‘plant.’ Strawberry seed saving is simple.

Eight out of 10 strawberries grown in the U.S. are grown in California!

Strawberries came in second to blueberries in the USDA’s analysis of antioxidant capacity of 40 fruits and vegetables. They are also rich in dietary fiber and manganese, and contain more vitamin C than any other berry.

Image courtesy of StrawberryPlants.org

When do I plant strawberries? Not now, NOVEMBER 1 to 10! Yes, it’s that specific for winter chill at the perfect time! They start producing runners now, but cut them off until early July! Then let them grow, and cut off the new baby plants mid October for November planting. Or, just let them grow to fill spots where, for one reason or another, a plant has gone missing, needs replacing, and/or another could fit in. When those needs are taken care of, cut off the rest of the runners. These runner plant babies will grow so fast you will be getting berries from them late summer and fall if you have everbearers/day neutral types!!

My plant isn’t producing….
Variety – If it is an everbearer, day neutral, variety it will produce almost all year. June/spring bearers put out a prolific batch in June, then it’s over. No amount of care or feeding is going to make that plant have berries after June. Sorry. Best to get the varieties your local nursery carries. Or talk with them about special ordering well in advance, so they can get the ones you want.Temps – cold weather slows down pollinators.Shaded – believe me, strawberries like all-day sun! If you are going to tuck them in among other plants, be sure to put them on the sunny side!Hungry – think about it! A strawberry plant is often pumping out several berries at a time! They are using up soil nutrition, so feed them! Try a light solution of fish emulsion/kelp every other week over some sprinkled seabird guano or a well aged manure. Give your strawberries a little fertilizer in the 0-10-10 proportions; that’s lots of phosphorus and potassium for strong roots and uptake of nutrients, blooms and fruits!Water – don’t let them dry out, they will stop producing. This month they tend to grow more leaves, send out runners. Clip off the runners for now, so they don’t take your plant’s energy away from producing berries, unless you want more plants right away.Mulching is good. They love pine needle mulch, if you have some about, because they prefer slightly acidic soil. Drape your berries over pine cones to keep them off the ground, out of the slug zone.Age – First year plants and 3rd year plants don’t produce as well.
My berries are really tiny! Strawberry varieties vary from mammoth chocolatiers, to midget but mighty tasty alpines. If it isn’t a variety issue, it may be diseased. See below please.

Misshapen berries or split in two sections with a hole in the center Irregular watering Your berry grows fast when it has water, then is restricted when it doesn’t….Western Tarnished Plant Bugs, feed on the flowers and developing surface seeds that stimulate growth causing misshapen berries, hard clusters of yellow seeds on the tip of the fruit. Clean up debris. Once you see this, you are too late to prevent it any further. Bummer. UC Davis IPM Integrated Pest Management on Lygus Hesperus. Image of typical cat-faced berries.Pollination Strawberry flowers are usually open and attractive to bees only a day or less. Temperatures below 60F, low night temperatures, & high humidity result in inadequate pollination, low yields of small or misshapen fruit. Strawberries require multiple pollination for perfect fruit formation. Generally, as the number of pollinator visits increases, there will be an increase in fruit set, number of seed per fruit, fruit shape, and fruit weight. ABOUT BEES: per NCSU ‘Bees rarely fly when the temperature is below 55°F. Flights seldom intensify until the temperature reaches 70°F. Wind speed beyond 15 miles per hour seriously slows bee activity. Cool, cloudy weather and threatening storms greatly reduce bee flights. In poor weather, bees foraging at more distant locations will remain in the hive, and only those that have been foraging nearby will be active. Pumpkin, squash, and watermelon flowers normally open around daybreak and close by noon; whereas, cucumbers, strawberries, and muskmelons generally remain open the entire day.’ So if the weather isn’t right THE DAY OR MORNING your flower opens…..

Whole plant has yellow leaves. The most common cause is nutrient deficiencies due to overwatering. Overwatering causes poor root growth making it difficult to move enough water to the leaves during hot weather. Lay back on watering; give your babies some Nitrogen –fish emulsion/kelp.

Rebecca & David Barker, Pilgrim Terrace Community Garden, Plot 41, staked the chicken wire in place, push it up to harvest, down to just the right height when done!

Holes in them, Chewed Silvery slime trails are the giveaway! Use the pine cones to drape your berries over to keep them off the ground. Put down some Sluggo or the like, to kill off night-time nibblers, slugs, snails. Harvest regularly before the berry gets soft and smelly, just before the buglets are attracted! Those little black pointy worms? I’m trying to find out what they are. If you know, let me know, ok?!Uprooted Sad to say, that sounds like ‘possums, raccoon, or skunk. They are looking for your earth worms or grubs. Just like bunnies, these critters won’t jump a low barrier. They just go around it. So install a foot tall perimeter of wire pieces, black plastic plant flats, old trellis parts, whatever you have around, or go get something that looks good to you so you will be happy. Relocating the critters is a good choice because, they do have children, that have children, that…

Angular Leaf Spot – exactly that. Spotted leaves. A cosmetic problem until it isn’t. Your plant will produce, but it won’t thrive. Spread by water, harvest before you water, water under the leaves, remove badly spotted leaves, don’t use them as mulch, wash your hands before going on to another plant.Strawberry Blight – the fungus is often confused with angular leaf spot, overwinters in old leaves, remove them. Remove old leaves from runner plants before setting. All day sun, well-drained soil, in an area with circulation, equals less fungus. For good air circulation, plant far enough apart, remove weeds, remove, replant and/or give away runner baby sets. Plant resistant varieties for your area of your state. Discussion of SoCal varieties. When you buy new plants be sure they are certified from a disease-free nursery. If you use a fungicide, spray the underside of leaves as well as the tops.

Successful SoCal varieties!

Chandler is the most widely commercially grown strawberry in California. High yield, early producer, large southern berry. It’s a June bearer, so if you want year round supply, this is not your berry.Seascape is an ever-bearing, big day neutral, all year strawberry, harvests are more abundant in late spring. High yield, resistant to most diseases except leaf spot. Reliable producer in fall, performs well in hot, dry climates. Berry is bright red inside and out!Oso Grande Another June bearer, high yield big berry, good in warm climates.

Feeding. It’s heating up, your plants are growing fast, they’re hungry and need more water! Give your leaf crops like lettuce lots of Nitrogen. Don’t overfeed beans, strawberries or tomatoes or you will get lots of leaf, no crop! If you do, did, give your plants some seabird guano (bat guano is too hot sometimes). Fertilizers high in P Phosphorus bring blooms – more blooms = more fruit! Get it in bulk at Island Seed & Feed. It’s easy to apply, just sprinkle, rough up your soil surface, water in. Go lightly with your applications to young plants that could get burned. When blooming starts, give your plants phosphorus fertilizers once a week, a month, as the package says, as you feel, to keep the blooms coming! Foliar feed your peppers, solanaceaes – toms, eggplant, and your roses with Epsom Salts! Only 1 Tablespoon per gallon of water does the job!

Water deeply. Poke your finger down into the soil to see how deeply your watering has penetrated. Get one of those gurgler devices to keep the water from blasting a hole in your soil; put the hose under your veggies. Try to remember to keep moving it. That’s the main reason I don’t do that myself, I just get carried away with weeding or tending, or harvesting, chatting, and, uh oh, woops, forget, and it’s flood time. Maybe I’ll carry a pocket sized timer and experiment with the right timing per water flow? Still, it’s a nuisance to have to keep moving the durn thing. The advantage of standing there watering is you notice what’s happening in your garden and think on what to do next. Flooding isn’t good because it drowns your soil organisms, and your plants drown too, not able to get their oxygen quota. What’s weird is that some wilting plants, like chard, may not be needing water at all! Some plants just naturally wilt in midday heat. They are doing a naturely thing, their version of shutting down unneeded systems, and watering them isn’t what they need at all! Also, flooding kinda compacts your soil as the life is washed down the drain so to speak, natural healthy soil oxygen channels cave in. You see, it’s the balance you need. Water underneath rather than overhead to keep from spreading diseases like strawberry leaf spot. Harvest first while bean plants are dry so you don’t spread mildew, then water. Wash your hands if you handle diseased plants, before you move on to other plants.

Disease & Pest Prevention

Ok, May is one of our mildew months. Get out the nonfat powered milk, throw some in your planting hole. Drench your plantlets, especially beans, melons and zucchini, while they are small, maybe every couple of weeks after that with ¼ Cup milk/Tablespoon baking soda mix, to a watering can of water. Get it up under the leaves as well as on top. That gives their immune system a boost, makes unhappy habitat for the fungi.

Sluggo for snails/slugs – put down immediately upon planting seeds, and when transplants are installed! Remove tasty habitat and hiding places

Trap gophers (or do what you do) immediately before they have children

Spray off black and gray aphids, white flies – get up underneath broccoli leaves, in the curls of kale leaves. Spray the heads of broc side shoots, fava flower heads. Remove badly infested parts or plants. NO ANTS.

Leafminers – remove blotched areas of the leaf or remove infested leaves from chard, beets. Don’t let your plants touch each other. Except for corn that needs to be planted closely to pollinate, plant randomly, biodiversely, rather than in blocks or rows. If you are planting a six-pack, split it up, 3 and 3, or 2, 3, 1, in separate places in your garden. Then if you get disease or pests in one group, they don’t get all your plants! Crunch those orange and black shield bugs, and green and black cucumber beetles (in cucumber & zuch flowers). Sorry little guys.

First, throw a big handful of bone meal in your planting hole and mix it in with your soil. Bone meal is high in Phosphorous (for blooming) and takes 6 to 8 weeks before it starts working – perfect timing! It is also high in calcium, which helps prevent blossom end rot in tomatoes. Water regularly or it won’t help. Fine ground bone meal releases quicker, coarse ground lasts longer.

Second, throw in a handful of nonfat powdered milk! It’s also high in calcium, that your plant can uptake right away, but more importantly, it is a natural germicide, and boosts your plant’s immune system!!!

And what about tossing in some worm castings? They have special plant-growth hormones in the humic acids of the castings.

This is indirect, but makes sense. Sprinkle mycorrhizal fungiON the roots of your transplants when you plant them! To live, the fungi need the sugars the roots give. The fungi, in turn, make a wonderful web of filaments, mycelium, that work in harmony with your plant, increasing its uptake of nutrients and water, reducing transplant shock, and helps with disease and pathogen suppression! One of the great things mycorrhiza does is assist Phosphorus uptake. Of the NPK on fertilizers, P is Phosphorus that helps roots and flowers grow and develop. Buy them fresh at Island Seed & Feed. Ask them, they will weigh out whatever amount you want. A quarter pound would be $4.99 (2-24-11/Matt). Mycorrhiza & Farmers video

When your plants start blooming

Sidedress them with seabird quano (NOT bat guano) that is high in phosphorus, stimulates blooms, more blooms! More blooms, more tomatoes!

Foliar drench or spray with Epsom Salt mix – 1 Tablespoon/watering can. Fastest way to feed plant, and often the most efficient, is to foliar feed it. Epsom Salt, right from your grocery store or pharmacy, is high in magnesium sulfate. Peppers love it too. It really gives your plants a boost, and fruits are bigger, peppers are thicker walled. I drench all my Solanaceaes – toms, peppers, eggplant, potatoes, tomatillos – with Epsom salt. Some say apply 1 tablespoon of granules around each transplant, or spray a solution of 1 tablespoon Epsom salt per gallon of water at transplanting, first flowering, and fruit set.

Fish/kelp mixes are for light feeding, are well balanced, but stinky, even when the fish emulsion is deodorized. If you want a more potent mix, use the hydrolyzed powder. Maxicrop is great stuff!

Along the way, if leaves start yellowing, green ‘em up quick with emergency doctoring! Bloodmeal! It’s very high in quickly usable Nitrogen (N). Dig it lightly into the top soil, water well. Be aware, it and fish/kelp mixes are stinky and bring predators.

Give everybody a little manure, dig into the top 6” of soil, but only on two sides of your plant. We want most of the near-the-surface roots to be undisturbed. Steer manure is cheap. Chicken stores in less space per what it can do, but it can be hot (burn your plants’ roots), so go lightly with it. Lettuces like manures. Compost is good stuff but sometimes not strong enough on N. Sometimes you can get FREE compost from the city.

Again, indirect, but organic mulch not only keeps your soil cool, moist and weed free, but feeds your soil as it decomposes. Apply coarse mulch that decomposes slowly so it doesn’t use up your plants’ Nitrogen in the decomposition process.

Well fed and maintained plants are more disease and pest resistant, are lusty and productive – they pay back with abundant larger tasty fruits and potent seeds for the next generation!

Now IS still a good time to start your seeds, especially your true heat lovers – eggplant, limas, melons, okra, peppers and pumpkins, and for you SoCal coastal marine layer gardeners, tomatoes!

Beautiful Scarlet Runner Bean Seeds

When you start them, for your sanity, label your seedlings with their name and date!

Hmph. How hard could it be, soaking seeds?! It isn’t, but it turns out there are lots of options and some specifics for better results!

Whether you only soak your seeds, or go on to presprouting, is your choice. For me, I found once they started sprouting, growth was rapid! At that stage, they can’t dry out or be too wet and rot, so you have to be ready to plant! Also, it is more difficult to very carefully plant sprouted seeds. They are delicate! So if you are at all bull-in-the-China-shop like I am, it may pay to only presoak!

The main arguments for seed soaking are not only for a speedier garden [Sprouted seed will grow in soils too cool for germination, YES!, but also for more complete germination of all seeds planted. You can get germination results in 3 to 4 days, while without pre-soaking it may take 2 weeks of unfavorable germinating conditions, and you may get none. Whether you plant directly in the ground, or for those of you at Pilgrim Terrace planning on using the greenhouse, here is some very useful info on seed soaking!

The Harrowsmith Country Life Book of Garden Secrets, by Dorothy Hinshaw Patent & Diane E. Bilberback:

The seed coat that surrounds the living seed sometimes does more than just protect it. The seed coats of many plants contain chemicals that inhibit germination of the seeds. This keeps them from germinating too early or when only briefly exposed to moisture. Some gardeners who are interested in rapid germination soak and wash their seeds to get around these germination inhibitors.

Some types of peppers, such as jalapenos, may germinate more rapidly if soaked in a couple of changes of lukewarm water before planting.

Beet and chard seeds also have a germination inhibitor; these strange-looking lumpy “seeds” are not really seeds at all but dried-up fruits of the plant, each of which contains several seeds. (That’s why beets and chard always need to be thinned.) The hard fruit covering contains a germination inhibitor, but if you soak the seed (fruit) overnight, it will absorb too much water, and you will still have poor germination.Seed coats play other important roles in the lives of plants. They regulate how much oxygen, water, and light the seeds receive.

You may have planted beans or corn in soil that was very moist but cool and were dismayed by subsequent poor germination. The seed coats of these crops can allow water to rush into the seeds too quickly, as with beets. This rapid water uptake can damage the tender cell membranes, permanently harming a young seedling so it grows slowly or preventing germination altogether. This process has been termed imbibitional shock, or soaking injury. Soaking injury can occur at any time with some crops, but cold temperatures make it worse.To avoid soaking injury, you can allow the seeds of sensitive crops such as beans, beets, and corn to soak up water gradually before planting them in the garden. This method is called seed moisturization.

One way to do this is to place them in moist vermiculite for eight to sixteen hours before planting. An easier method for most home gardeners is to place damp paper towels on a sheet of wax paper, sprinkle on the seeds you want to hydrate, and roll up the towels with the wax paper on the outside. Leave the seeds inside the paper for eight to sixteen hours at room temperature. Don’t let them sit for more than nineteen hours, or the delicate seedling root may begin to penetrate the seed coat, and you could damage it during planting.

Things to know plucked from the web….

Start with viable seed. Check the date on the seed pack to see when it was packaged for.

It won’t do you a bit of good, for example, to presoak lettuce seeds and expect them to germinate in a soil temp of 87 degrees, as they prefer a cooler-temperature. So start your pre-soaked seeds at the temperature and time you generally plant. Pre-soaking just gives you faster performance under normal conditions.

There are huge variations in the length of time people soak their seeds!

Tomato and Pepper seeds are soaked 6 hours, no more that because they can suffocate from lack of air.

…overnight in tepid water. That is water that is warm, but not hot. I make sure that the seeds are covered at least twice their size with water. I don’t add anything to the water, but when planting them, I do water them in with manure tea.

Soak them for 12 hours in compost tea, then rinse & drain. Rinse & drain each day, keeps the seeds moist until you have roots. With beans, the roots emerge from the scar. Plant the seed endwise, the root pointing down. Plant roots and shoots at the soil surface, the bulk of the seed below the soil mix surface. Keep moist.

Soaked in tepid well water for six hours. The water was then poured off and the seeds were rinsed a couple times a day with some misting in between. The seeds were planted once they had visible roots.

12 hours in water, then drain and leave for 12 hours, then keep repeating the process until they split their skins and start showing a root. It normally only takes 2 or 3 days and then I plant out.

Bean seeds may split if soaked for more than an hour or two. However, even this short soak will speed up germination

When legume (peas/beans) seed coats split, the seeds may lose vital nutrients and fall prey to disease fungi when planted. Drain them after they have been submerged for an hour.

I do think I’ve oversoaked bean and pea seeds in the past, almost to the point where they are falling apart, and that it has weakened them. The soak time would depend on the size of the seed I would think, but never more than a few hours.

I let them soak ‘til they are big and full, or ‘til they start to sprout a small root. Corn, beans, peas, squash (some) and pumpkins. Then I gently place them in the ground. [Tweezers, please?!]

Cucurbita (cucs, luffas, melons, squash) seeds only needs to be soaked to loosen up the shell. Gourd seeds in particular are very tough and some people even scratch the sides of tips (scarify) to make it easier to germinate. I soaked them a little and also wrap them in wet toilet tissue before planting. This will help to keep them moist.

Last year I soaked my bean seeds in a kelp solution before planting and they sprouted in about 2 days.

I would never use bleach in the soaking solution. If you are worried about contamination, try soaking in chamomile tea or 3% hydrogen peroxide instead. If the seed is purchased, I wouldn’t bother.

Hydrogen peroxide, both in soak and rinse solutions:1 oz. of 3% H²O² to 1 pint of water. Sprouts come up faster. Some people have reported 3/4″ sprouts in 24 hours.

When you plant the seedlings dig the hole and spray it with peroxide. Wet it good and then wet the roots of the seedlings or small plant.

The vegetable that gave me a problem was the cabbage. I was determined to conquer the cabbageworm. Years ago I sprayed the cabbage plants with peroxide to no avail. This year I soaked the cabbage seeds before planting them. There were no signs of the bug until the cabbage plants were almost full grown, then I poured about a quarter of cup of 8% peroxide over the cabbage, letting it flow down into the layers of the leaves. That stopped the cabbage bugs.

Please see more tips… Part 2!Scarifying your seed, how to plant wet seed, better hot weather germination, water tricks!

When there are warm days, it is ever so tempting to plant up summer veggies! Don’t do it. Not yet. Start seeds.

Depending on how much space you have, plant a last round of your very favorite winter crops – lettuces, beets, broccoli, cabbage, carrots, cauliflower, celery, chard, kale, kohlrabi, potatoes, radishes, turnips. Bare-root asparagus and artichokes. I forgot to tell you last month, you could start zucchini! At Pilgrim Terrace Community Garden we had an elder gardener who always started his in January, early February, and had great zucchini way before everyone else! Other than zuchs, really look at those days to maturity, and add the number of days you expect for harvest duration. If you plant a long maturing plant that would be harvested for some time, think if you would rather have that space for an early round of a summer veggie you love more. Choose mildew and disease resistant varieties for your late peas.

Keep sidedressing your producing plants, protect your tasty lettuces from slugs and snails. Keep watch for aphids, and, if you disturb your plant and a little cloud of white things fly off, you have white flies. Spray those little buggers off asap so they don’t spread to your other plants or someone else’s! Keep up with your harvesting. Wait until it warms up some more to prune frost damaged plants. Even wait until next month to fertilize.

But do prepare your soil for March summer veggie planting. Dig if you must – I’m a no-dig, no weed person who leaves the living soil structure intact [see Gaia’s Garden, 2nd edition, chapter on soil]. Instead, prepare your soil by layering good stuff on top, called Lasagna Gardening, sheet composting, composting in place, or on-the-ground composting! Garden smart! If it is already there, you don’t have to move it from the compost pile to where it is needed! Build your soil in place or in your new raised beds! If you are putting raised beds on top of your lawn, lay down several layers of heavy cardboard first, to stop the grass and weeds, thoroughly soak it, then layer, layer, layer! When they get there, your plant’s roots will easily poke their way through the cardboard. Definitely attach gopher proof wire mesh to the bottom of your raised bed frame before you start filling it, unless you are creating your garden on top of concrete or a roof. If you are container gardening, check out Patricia Lanza’s book Lasagna Gardening for Small Spaces: A Layering System for Big Results in Small Gardens and Containers: Garden in Inches, Not Acres.

Lay twigs or straw first, a few inches deep. This aids drainage and helps aerate the pile.

ADD dry materials – straw, leaves and wood ashes. If you have wood ashes, sprinkle in thin layers, or they will clump together and be slow to break down. Fine chopped, smaller materials decompose faster.

Think how that pile is going to decompose lower and lower. Build enough layers to get the amount of soil you need. Could be 18” high.

If you like, sprinkle some microbe rich topsoil over it all to ‘inoculate’ with living soil organisms that will immediately go to work. Add a few handfuls of red wriggler compost worms. Add any other amendments that make you happy.

Install some pathways. Don’t walk on your oxygen rich breathing brew and squeeze the life out of it, or crush your worms and soil structure! Keep things fluffy for good soil aeration and water absorption.

If you need to, for aesthetic reasons, cover the compost with a pretty mulch that will break down slowly. Spread it aside when you are ready to plant. It could be down leaves; if you need your soil in that area to be slightly acidic, cover with pine needles (strawberries).

If things get stinky, add more carbon.

You want to plant NOW, or the same day you layer? Can do! Or your instant soil wasn’t so instant? OK, here’s the instant remedy. Make planting holes in your layers, put in some compost you purchased or have on hand, mycorrhizal fungi, and plant! The rest will catch up, and the heat from the composting material underneath will warm your plants! You WILL have a fine garden!

If you do also need a traditional compost pile for spot needs, consider “No-turn” composting! The biggest chore with composting is turning the pile from time to time. However, with ‘no-turn composting’, your compost can be aerated without turning. The secret is to thoroughly mix in enough coarse material, like straw – little air tubes, when building the pile. The compost will develop as fast as if it were turned regularly, and studies show that the nitrogen level may be even higher than turned compost. With ‘no-turn’ composting, add new materials to the top of the pile, and harvest fresh compost from the bottom of the bin.

So here are 3 ways to save garden time and your back! 1) No digging! 2) Compost in place, no moving it. 3) No compost turning! Uh huh.